


Survive

by Euphorion



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:25:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Louis remembers with utter clarity the way he felt in that moment, halfway slid to the floor with Zayn's head in his lap and Niall's feet digging into his side, with Harry's hand fondly atop his head, remembers looking at Liam, drinking him in, the little creases by his eyes, the wide stretch of his lips as he gives up on his impression entirely and just surrenders to his joy. He remembers the utter comfort of it, the little curl of something curious in his stomach, the burn of alcohol in his throat.</i>
</p><p> <i>It's one of the last times he remembers being able to laugh freely and without fear.</i></p><p>  <i>Exactly one year later, he's crouched in the dark, fist closed loosely around the baseball bat at his side, listening. His back's pressed against the end of a bar, which feels wooden and shitty through his thin t-shirt and he makes an absent sort of note to be careful when he moves. The last thing he needs is to cut himself on a fucking loose nail or splinter. The smell of his blood would be like setting off a goddamn flare.</i></p><p>Zombie!AU, by which I mean, Zombie Apocalypse Future!fic. OT5 with definite Lilo and I suppose Narry focus, but really everything under the sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinywhimsy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinywhimsy/gifts).



The year before it happens, they all get together the day after Christmas in Zayn's NYC loft (which is, most weekends that he's in the states, also Harry's NYC loft, because he still hasn't gotten the hang of real, steady homes. Louis thinks it's funny, mostly, and he knows Zayn doesn't mind). 

They get well smashed and trade all the new embarrassing family stories. Louis always wins, he's got the most sibs, but Zayn's no slouch either, and Niall does a smashing impression of his mum. Liam squares up his shoulders and tries to do a face like his stepdad but looks more like some kind of gorilla, and they're all too busy laughing at him to pay much attention to Harry rambling about how great Gemma is. They all know, anyway.

Louis remembers with utter clarity the way he felt in that moment, halfway slid to the floor with Zayn's head in his lap and Niall's feet digging into his side, with Harry's hand fondly atop his head, remembers looking at Liam, drinking him in, the little creases by his eyes, the wide stretch of his lips as he gives up on his impression entirely and just surrenders to his joy. He remembers the utter comfort of it, the little curl of something curious in his stomach, the burn of alcohol in his throat.

It's one of the last times he remembers being able to laugh freely and without fear.

Exactly one year later, he's crouched in the dark, fist closed loosely around the baseball bat at his side, listening. His back's pressed against the end of a bar, which feels wooden and shitty through his thin t-shirt and he makes an absent sort of note to be careful when he moves. The last thing he needs is to cut himself on a fucking loose nail or splinter. The smell of his blood would be like setting off a goddamn flare.

The world sounds relatively peaceful. There's the steady groan and shuffle, the drumbeat of this brave new world they're in, and that's really about it. He thinks, with a grim sort of smile, that this is maybe the quietest New York City's ever been.

He slips up from his hiding spot, bat at his side, and backpack full of stolen food on his back. It's mostly beans and tuna and jam, things that keep forever. This isn't the fifties anymore, no one made Cold War rations in preparation for whatever the hell happened. It just—happened, and everyone scrambled to make do or didn't.

He vaults through the broken window and half-slides, half-falls down the steps, then sets off running.

He has a kind of pride in these moments, with the wind in his teeth and the night a shaking, howling mess around him. He used to have pride in a lot of things that seems small now: he was proud of record sales, of lyrics that addressed the surface of life and love without delving into anything close to the depths of it. He was proud of how good he was at football, and his humor, and the way he always got away with his bullshit.

Some things, of course, do translate; some things fade and some just become more pronounced.

He turns a corner and makes a quick circle, making absolutely certain he wasn't followed, before reaching down and tugging the tarp off a cellar door in the sidewalk. He pulls it open with a grunt, and descends to greet his boys.

Niall sees him first, and hops up from where he's talking to Liam with a grin. "Louis!" he calls. "Welcome back."

Louis tugs him in to kiss his cheek. "Yes, yes," he says, "we're all very pleased to see me." He exchanges little touches with all of them, fist-bumping Zayn and running his thumb down the back of Harry's neck and grabbing Liam's hand and squeezing it when offered, just little affirmations of _we're here, we're alive_ before settling down between Zayn's knees and opening up his backpack and passing out food.

"Yay," says Harry, deadpan, but Louis kicks him and he gives a real, genuinely grateful smile, so that's alright.

"Guys," says Liam, "remember that time we were in Paris and we ate at that little—"

Nial gives a groan like an elephant trumpeting. "Liam Payne, if you start talking about pre-zombie food I will never in my life forgive you."

"Seriously," says Zayn.

"I used to cook," Harry says wistfully.

"This is pretty much the last of it," Louis says soberly. "We're going to have to move soon."

The news sort of deflates all of them, and they draw in tighter in on themselves, sharing warmth. Louis ends up curled up against Niall's back, Liam's arm slung over his hip. He's not tired, despite his food run, except the constant, bone-weariness that comes from fear, and he wants to squirm around and face Liam and talk to him, about—about anything, really, wants to say, _tell me what you're thinking about,_ wants to say, _let's write an album for the end of the world._

They move two days later, in the morning, packing up what little stuff they have—mostly small things and foodstuffs and weapons. Harry tucks away his notebook, Zayn his set of pens and his spraypaints—which double as a weapon, when you're fighting things with eyes. Louis just has his bat. He sometimes thinks, if the world ever goes back to normal, he'd like to learn to play baseball.

Or maybe he'll burn the fucking thing and never want to hold one again, depending.

They're quieter, as a whole group, than they were (as Niall called it) "pre-zombie", although they mutter warnings and observations and little jokes to one another as they walk, backpacks on their backs, staying as much in the center of the road as they can. They learned early on: the brighter the better, so they walk in strange patterns, skirting the edges of the shadows cast by the buildings.

Louis would've liked to postpone the move until a day when the sun was really bright, but it's midwinter, and this kind of white-grey overcast sky is pretty much the best they're gonna get.

It starts raining, mid-afternoon, and they duck into the broken shell of an upscale clothing store to rest for a few minutes. It's open enough that they can see all around, and maybe it's the moving, maybe it's the fact that it's Christmas, approximately, but everything feels—okay. Harry nabs a lady's hat, one of those big-brimmed ones with the feathers and all that Louis had figured kind of disappeared with the art of horse-racing and weird lacy umbrellas. He sticks it on Niall's head, and Niall laughs, stepping over the remains of a windowframe to what probably used to be a floor-length mirror, though now only the top third or so remains unbroken. He models a little, moving his hips, and Zayn crosses to him, whistling in appreciation.

It happens so fast. There's motion beyond a pile of boxes that Louis— _stupid, stupid_ —had assumed were piled up in front of a wall, but now his eye catches on the faded fitting room sign, and then a horrible, jerking thing, nothing but rot in motion, swings itself into the room. Zayn dodges, but Niall—his sightlines obscured just enough by the brim of his hat that he can't react in time—gets knocked sideways and then pulled upwards in one of the thing's hideous fists.

"No!" Louis screams, and leaps forward, swinging at the thing with his bat. The metal of the bat impacts in the thing's face with a wet sort of shattering sound, and Louis is covered in shrapnel—bone, it must be, bits of skull and flesh, and if his whole mind weren't filled entirely with terror he might have thrown up—and it drops Niall, who falls with a gasp and then a sharp cry as he lands wrong, the broken shards of glass still stuck in the window frame slicing clean through flesh of his thigh. " _Fuck!_ " he screams, and then Louis is too busy hitting the thing again, and again, and again, to know anything but blood and fear and his aching hands clenched tight around the bat.

The next thing he knows Liam is pulling it from his hands and using a bit of his shirt to clean off his face and neck, thorough and kind. There's a little crease between his eyebrows as he concentrates, and Louis blinks at him. "Hi," he says.

"Hi." Liam runs his thumbs over Louis' cheekbones, and then slips the tips of his fingers into his Louis hair and over his scalp like he's checking for injury. It feels amazing, and Louis, still in some white, blank world left empty in the wake of his fear and rage, almost purrs at him.

Someone gives a little cry of pain nearby, and Louis' eyes, half-closed in pleasure, fly open again. "Fuck," he says, "fuck, _Niall_ —"

He scrambles out of Liam's arms and over to where Niall's propped up against the wall, breathing shallowly. Zayn's kneeling by his side, tearing strips of his already barely-there shirt and cinching them tight around his leg. Harry's perched at the doorway, crowbar in hand, glancing back and forth between them and the world outside.

"Niall," says Zayn, his voice cracking, is hands all over Niall's face, impossibly gentle even in his panic, "Niall, c'mon, stay awake, y'gotta stay awake, man."

"Keep him talking," says Harry, white-faced, not looking at them. "Just—keep him fucking talking. Lou, you okay?"

Louis clears his throat, checks in with himself, makes sure he's not bit anywhere. Just achey, he finds, and the relief is huge. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'm good, I'm fine."

Zayn swallows hard. "Niall, hey, hey, what—what does Taylor Swift say when she goes down a slide?"

Niall's eyes are closed but his lips twitch into a grin. "Y-you do it, Z, you're—you're so good—"

Zayn shakes his head, his eyes bright. "You have to do it with me, Niall, please."

Niall's bleeding a lot, and the smell of it, sharp to even Louis' human nose, has changed the atmosphere of the world completely. Outside, he can hear them. They might not have found them yet, slow and stupid as they are, but they're coming.

Liam touches Louis' shoulder, and Louis tears his eyes away from Niall to meet his gaze. Liam's lips are set. "We need water, Lou, clean water, or even after we stop the bleeding there's too much risk of infection, he could—" he stops, swallowing, but he doesn't have to say anything else. Louis nods and shifts his weight to make the dash over to Harry.

Liam's fingers close around his bicep, making him pause. "What're you going to do?"

"Whee- _hee_ ," Niall sings, voice rough, and Zayn chokes on his laugh, joins in with him. Hearing their voices, fucked as they are, blending together in this of all places—

Louis smiles tightly. "I'm going to get water, obviously."

Liam stares at him. "Alone? No way. I'm coming with you." 

Louis turns to actually face him. "You can't," he says, his voice only shaking a little bit. It helps to know that he's right. "They need you here. Zayn can carry Niall but not without compromising his hands, and Harry's not enough to guard the two of them alone. I can meet you back at base, we can build a fire there, get him warm."

Liam glares at his hands for a minute. He's still holding Louis' arm, his fingers gentle, and it feels—calming, like an anchor, steadying him. His thumb is moving, little soothing circles against the soft underside of Louis' arm. "Fine," Liam says at last, and then he's moving, and Louis is too caught off-guard to stop him. He almost shouts after him, but catches himself, hissing instead. " _Liam—_ "

But Liam's already crossed to Harry's look-out perch, muttered something in his ear, and Harry's nodding and pulling him in hard for a hug. He holds on to him for a long time, and Louis can see Liam's lips moving at his ear, sees Harry nodding and tightening his arms, and then they're pulling away, and Harry presses a kiss to Liam's lips, lingering. Liam, his face washed pink, vanishes through the doorway and into the street.

Louis, suddenly shaking, on the edge of tears, waits to hear him die.

But the noises outside don't change. There's no clicking, no shriek of recognition, no sound of combat, just the hiss of the rain and the steady, hypnotic shuffle of inhuman feet. 

He watches Harry release a long breath, and feels his own lungs deflate, hadn't even realized he was holding his breath. Harry turns to look at him, and while his eyes are scared they're also steady. They breathe together a moment, gazes locked. In, out, in, out, chests rising and falling in unison until Louis feels like he can stand without his legs collapsing under him. He gives Harry a nod of thanks, although it seems—cheap, everything he does to appreciate any of them seems tacky or slight or insulting, like he could ever put into words the ways in which these boys are keeping him alive.

Harry nods back, though, a tiny smile in the corners of his eyes, and Louis knows he understands. He pushes himself to his feet and goes over to Zayn and Niall, kneeling by Zayn's side. Niall's eyes are open, and his lips are moving, but if he's saying anything it's too quiet for Louis to hear. Zayn keeps nodding, though, his eyelashes wet, cupping Niall's face with gentle fingers. "Yeah," he says. "That's right, Ni, keep going."

Louis slides a hand against the small of his back, just letting him know he's there. Zayn doesn't look at him, just says in a low voice, "We gotta do something, Lou."

Louis nods. "Pick him up."

Zayn does look at him, then, eyes wide. "You want to move him? But—"

"It's not safe here," Louis says. "It's getting dark, and there are five, six exits from this place, impossible to cover them all. He's lost enough blood to bring the sharks down on our heads, you know that. Plus—" he swallows. "Liam went to get us water and meet us at base, and we'll need fire, cloth, clean stuff." 

Zayn's eyes go wider. "Liam _left?_ By himself? Louis—"

Louis curls his fingers around the back of Zayn's neck to shut him up, pulls their foreheads together. "Zayn."

Zayn closes his eyes. Louis can feel his breath, feel how panicked he is, but he's quiet, waiting for Louis. He feels like he should give some impassioned speech, but he doesn't know what the fuck he'd even say, there are no words for anything in his life anymore. "Zayn," he says again, and closes his eyes, too, leaning further in so they're nose to nose, sharing air and warmth and space. "I need you on this. I need you."

Zayn takes a shaking breath. "Yeah," he says. "Yes. Alright."

Louis opens his eyes and smiles, though he's trembling. "Alright," he says. He turns to Niall, whose eyes have slipped closed, although his lips are still moving. "Up you get, huh Ni?" He says as brightly as he can, and Niall stirs, opens fluttering eyelids.

"What?" he manages. "What's—where, where are we?" He presses the heel of his hand to one eye. He's so pale, a boy made of blood and mud and paper. "I think I'm—verr' drunk."

Zayn chuckles, eyes warm and hands steadier as he and Louis help to pull Niall upwards. "Let's get you home, then, huh?" he says, and Niall happily loops his arms around Zayn's neck, burying his face against his shoulder. Zayn shifts him a little higher on his back, his hands clasped under Niall's ass, and it's such a familiar sight that Louis' breath catches in his throat and for a minute, if it weren't for the grime and the noise and the bloody strip of cloth tied tight around Niall's thigh, they could just be coming home after a night out, or headed back to the bus after a show, Niall exhausted from racing around the stage all night.

Zayn sees it in his eyes, and frees a hand to pull him in, kissing him hard. His lips are chapped and he smells like sweat and blood and sorrow but it's Zayn anyway, electric, familiar. "We'll get back there," he says firmly, when Louis pulls back again, breathless. "We'll be there again."

Louis swallows hard and nods and wants to keep kissing him, wants to forget everything but him, just for a while, wants to pretend. But Liam's out there in the gathering dark. They need to move.

Afterward, if someone asked him how they made it back to base, collapsing, exhausted, in a heap in the kitchen, not even alive enough to wrestle their way through the trap door—if someone were to ask how they made it through the dark, slick streets (and they did, they all did, variations on the same questions) he couldn't tell them. He knew it was close, a couple times, remembers the stink of _them_ everywhere, more than he's ever seen, even in the beginning when the feeding was good and they hadn't started turning on each other or fanning out into the suburbs to follow the survivors. He can almost remember—hands, and the feeling of sawing through bone, and Harry's arms around his chest, pulling him backwards.

But mostly he remembers Niall: pale, delirious Niall, who sometimes came to life to mutter questions in Zayn's ear, to cough and laugh and sing little snatches of songs, their songs. Mostly he remembers Niall's shallow breathing, and knowing with a calm sort of certainty what would happen to all of them if he stopped.

+

Louis is on stage, half-blind from the lights, and the screams of their fans are rising all around him. He's laughing, because he's always laughing, and Zayn catches him around the middle, spinning him and muttering something in his ear, and Harry's singing, one arm slung around Niall's shoulders, Niall leaning into his space with adoring eyes. 

Zayn's still clutching him, and Louis leans back into him, reaches up to tug out his in-ear and listen to what he's trying to say but it's not there, and there's something else—he clutches at Zayn's hands, fists his fingers in his shirt. "Zayn," he tries to say, but it comes out gasping, terrified. The lights are going out, not blackout-style like they do at the end of the song but one at a time, fizzing and popping into nothing. "Zayn, where's Liam? Where's Liam?"

The screams around them turn to gurgling shrieking. Zayn's mouth is at his ear and he's not laughing anymore, his hands almost painful at Louis' wrists. "Wake up," he says, his breath hot, and Louis shivers and curls further into him. "Louis, please, wake up!"

He blinks his eyes open, and the shrieking and the popping doesn't stop. He's curled against Zayn's chest amid a swam of bodies, and it takes him a minute to understand them as human, as soldiers with guns strapped to their backs and camouflage, rather than the things they've been fighting for so long. He untangles himself from Zayn almost all the way, although he keeps their fingers threaded together, and gets to his feet. Harry's talking to someone who looks official, and there's a stretcher with Niall strapped to it being rolled away, and Louis and Zayn in one motion throw themselves after it. "Wait!" Louis cries. "Where are you taking him? What's happening?"

There are soldiers at all the doors and windows, occasionally firing rounds into the surrounding streets, pop pop pop pop like the stage lights in Louis' dream. The medic knocks his hands away from Niall, snapping something incomprehensible from behind his mask. Louis curses at him and tugs Zayn over to where Harry's still deep in conversation with the—captain? who knows.

"Where's Liam?" he demands when he gets close enough. "And where are they taking Niall?"

Harry holds out his arms and he folds himself into them gratefully, both of them leaning on each other like the first pair at the base of a house of cards. "Your friend has to be examined, make sure he's not infected," says the soldier. "You all will too. How the hell did you four survive out here?"

Louis swallows. Zayn squeezes his hand tight. "Sir," he says respectfully, "there—there were five of us, Liam—our other friend, he went to find water yesterday afternoon—"

The captain's face is grave. "Haven't found anyone alive within twenty miles," he says softly. "I'm sorry, kid, but it was surprise enough finding you all."

There's a rushing blankness inside Louis' head. "No," he says. "No, you're lying, or—he, he must have gotten farther than that—"

"This is a sad but good day," the soldier says, shaking his head. "You're safe now. We're all safe. It's over."

He reaches out to squeeze Louis' shoulder, and then turns away, barking out orders to his men.

They're silent for a while. Louis can feel every beat of his heart, like his whole body has shrunk down to press his ribs in and in and in. He's penned in, a cage for himself. This isn't how it was supposed to go. Ever since the first moment, since the windows broke and the sirens went and the world went mad with hunger, it was the five of them. Brothers in arms, brothers in more than blood, the five of them literally against the world, and—that's just how it was, either all of them lived or all of them died, not this, not. They can't go on without Liam. _He_ can't go on without Liam. It can't be over.

"No," says Zayn after a minute, responding either to the soldier or to Louis' own thoughts. "It's not. We have to go get him."

Louis looks at Harry, who's nodding. 

"They might not know about the basement entrance," Zayn continues. "Li's gotta be out there, right, and they're killing the zombies. If we survived a year when they were fucking swarming the city we can survive a few days in just empty streets, right?"

Louis bites his lip. "What about Niall?"

Harry takes a breath. "We'll—we'll leave him a message, so he knows we're okay, knows what we're doing."

Zayn nods. "Haz, you still have your notebook?"

Harry's already fishing around under his shirt, where he has all his important stuff, tucked inside strips of sheet he's wrapped around his chest. "Yeah, s'right here."

Louis takes it and Zayn fishes out a pen from somewhere in his pocket, and they flip to a blank page, starting to tear it out, but Harry stops them. "Just give him the whole thing."

Louis blinks at him. "You're sure?"

Harry shrugs, and he looks, of all things, kind of embarrassed. "If, if anything should, y'know. I'd want him to have it anyway."

Zayn's eyes warm, and Louis jabs Harry in the side warningly. "Nothing's going to happen, Styles," he says firmly, and Harry ducks and nods, smiling a little.

Zayn writes, _us four all good aha :) x i hope they find out where your payne is coming from._

He hesitates for a minute, and then writes, _Huge love_. His pen still hovers, and Louis knows exactly how he feels, that lack of language for anything that really matters.

"He'll know what you mean," Harry reassures him. He reaches out to tilt Zayn's chin up, make him look him in the eye. "Zayn. He knows."

Zayn nods, tilting his head down a little to smile against the heel of Harry's hand, like he's letting Harry take his weight and his worry, and Harry smiles back, eyes gentle. Zayn presses a kiss to his palm, closes the journal, marking the page with the bookmark, and goes off to find a medic to give it to.

"Hey," says Harry when he's gone. "Lou."

Louis looks at him and waits.

"When Liam left, he told me—just in case—"

Louis steps up into his space, shoving a hand over his mouth maybe harder than he means to. He's angry, so angry, not at _Harry_ but just at. This. At being here and not being able to feel safe, to go home, because there's still a part of his fucking heart somewhere out there. Liam—Liam's—

"He's alive," he snarls to Harry's face. "He's alive and when we find him he can tell me his fucking self, so don't you dare—" his voice breaks, and he sags against Harry's chest, his shoulders shaking and his face suddenly hot and wet. Harry wraps long arms around him, and for the first time in weeks Louis lets himself cry.

Zayn slips up behind him at some point and just slides an arm around his back, laying his head against Louis' shoulder blade, and it's. Louis wants so badly to give in to their warmth, wants to sleep, but he can't. Not yet.

Zayn drops a knapsack at their feet, and when Louis raises his eyebrows at him he just says softly, "Uniforms."

Harry nods, flicks his eyes up over their heads to track the movements of the soldiers.

"I stole these, too," Zayn says quietly, when they've separated, when Louis has rubbed his stinging eyes. He slips something cold and hard into Louis' hand. "You remember that time we went to the firing range?"

Louis looks down at the pistol in his hand, at the other in Zayn's. "Yeah," he says softly. "Well enough."

"Good," says Zayn, and they set off for the hidden trap door.

+

They are very, very good at moving quietly. It's amazing what a year will do.

It helps, probably, that they're fast, and not shambling, but they manage to slip silently between the two sentries posted on the street with the tarp, paying attention to their routes and where they turn and how long it takes, and then they're away through the alleyways. It's still daylight, and they have to use the opposite tactics they usually do, sticking to the shadows and the edges of buildings. They might be dressed as soldiers, but there's no way they can fake it well enough if they're confronted.

It's only when they've gotten safely beyond the perimeter, beyond most of the guards, that it hits Louis that they have no idea where to go.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, let's think about this." Harry and Zayn draw closer in around him to listen. "We were what—" he glances at the sun, at the streets around them. "20 blocks down from base when Niall got hurt, so Liam spread out from there, but he knew to meet us at base, so he would probably try and get water somewhere between here and there." 

Harry nods, thinks about the area. "Fire hydrants," he suggests. "That's what I would do."

Zayn shakes his head. "They make too much noise, draw too much attention. Besides, they're not clean enough, not for cleaning wounds, you'd need something that's been sealed. Petrol stations, corner stores, that's where I'd check, see if there are any that haven't been picked clean."

"Alright," says Louis, "yeah, that narrows it down a bit." They take a left at the next corner, darting diagonally across the open space, and into another alley, zigzagging through the streets. Everything is dead silent except the soft sounds of their own feet, and rather than being comforted by it Louis is just more on edge, aware of every breath, every time Harry pushes his hair behind his ear or Zayn scratches his stubble, gnaw at his thumbnails. He watches Harry absently check his chest for the lump of his notebook, watches him remember.

He holds out a hand to each of them, and they proceed as one down the shady alleyways.

The first bodega they come to is a wreck of glass and metal, looted almost completely. There's a carpet of mold crawling its way across the floor, and they don't venture further in. The next three are in similar condition, and Louis is starting to feel desperate down to his toes. The silence is driving him mad, but they can't make any noise—not just because there are soldiers out there doing sweeps—they've ducked away from them five or six times—but because he's not sure he remembers how.

"Hold up," says Harry, and picks his way through the wreckage, his shoes making soft, disgusting noises on the remains of torn-up cereal boxes and ruptured, rusted soda cans. Louis curls his fingers around the cold metal of the gun, tucked into his back pocket.

"There's a back room," Harry calls, peering around the corner, and Louis and Zayn duck under the hanging strips of awning to follow him. Harry grunts, and there's a sound of creaking wood, and Louis rounds the corner to see him tossing a moldy plank to one side, and beyond him, in the darkness of the doorway, the familiar groan of stuttering motion.

"Harry!" He shouts, panicked, and then lists sideways, because there's a _bang!_ from barely a foot away, and the thing falls forward into the light, oozing molasses-blood and gurgling and choking on its own tongue. Harry puts his boot through its face almost absently, and then turns, a little shaky smile stretching his lips. "Guns are loud," Louis hears him say through the ringing in his ears, and he flicks his own eyes sideways to Zayn.

Zayn's standing, eyes wide, one hand flung out, fingers shaking around the grip. He seems to shake himself out of it, and tucks the gun back into his belt again, crossing to Harry and pulling his against his shoulder, a little cradling hug. "Stupid," he says softly. "Reckless."

Harry shrugs a little, but leans into him. "Thanks," he says.

Zayn just nods and releases him. "With the zombie right there, though," he says, "Liam's probably not—"

"No," says Louis, kneeling by the thing's corpse. "Look."

He points into the patterns in the dust, just inside the door. There are the long, dragging tracks of the zombie itself, but beyond that, stretching away into the darkness, are footprints. Relatively fresh ones.

"Shit," breathes Zayn, "we found him."

They pick their way through the darkness, Louis' every nerve on high alert. It's not just a back room, it turns out, but a series of back hallways, probably connecting to the other stores on the block. The city's full of them, interconnected storerooms an warehouses with shopfronts attached. They light a match each, staggered so they'll never be in complete darkness, and follow the meandering tracks.

There's no blood, which means Liam's probably not hurt, but he was definitely looking for a place to hide. His footsteps dart this way and that, deciding to take a turn and then changing his mind. Finally they come out into a slightly larger hallway. There's a window, set high up in one of the walls, and the shafts of cold, clear light, made solid by the shifting, glittering dust in the air, reveal something that stops Louis in his tracks.

There's a door in the wall across from the window, marked _Private_ in peeling black letters, and around the base of it there are four zombies, pawing and clawing at the door. They're half-collapsed on themselves like all of them are these days, only upright starting with their torsos, their legs stretched out behind like they've been crawling. They're weak with hunger, mostly bone and gristle, but watching them move, watching their flesh shift and their bones grind together, he can feel himself grow hot and cold by turns, every instinct he has telling him to run.

"Liam's in there," he says instead, his voice sounding very far away. "What else would they be after?"

Zayn nods, his gun in hand again.

"Give me your gun," Harry says softly.

Louis blinks at him. "What?"

Harry holds out a hand. "Give me your gun. Zayn and I'll draw them off, you get Liam."

Louis frowns at him. "No," he says. "No way."

"Lou," Zayn says softly, "if Harry were to try and stay behind, they'd be on him immediately, big hot lug that he is."

"Thanks," says Harry cheekily.

Zayn knocks him with a shoulder. "Body heat, you flirt." He never takes his eyes off Louis' face. "Harry's too big, and I'm the best with a gun. It's gotta be you."

"But," Louis says. He can't—he can't find Liam only to lose Zayn and Harry, he _can't._

Harry reaches out, touches the corner of his mouth like he used to to get Louis to stop frowning, a _here, this is how you smile gesture_ , and it's such a familiar thing, such a Harry thing, that Louis kind of want to cry. 

"Do you trust us?" Zayn asks, and it's such a stupidly obvious questions that it blindsides Louis.

"Of course," he says. "Obviously, I just—"

"I know," says Zayn. He tilts their heads together, leans in to kiss Louis chastely, and Harry presses a wet kiss to his temple, using it as a distraction to pluck the gun from his hands. "We'll see you in a minute," Zayn says, inches from his lips. "Go get our Liam."

Then he turns, and shoots one of the zombies through its remaining eye.

If the noise had been loud outside in the bodega, here it's like a cannon, bouncing around the halls in a cacophony of echoes, and the zombies all turn, shrieking in rage. They move, half slithering, half running towards them. Harry whoops, and jumps up and down a little. "C'mon!" he shouts. "C'mon, you big uglies!"

He and Zayn wait until they're close, almost too close, and then take off running back the way they came, the zombies, single-minded in their hunger, following. Louis presses himself against the wall, heart hammering, as they pass him by.

When they've gone, he slips over to the door and tries the knob. It's locked, not unexpectedly, but also not complicatedly, and he slips his knife from his shoe and works it into the space between the door and the wall, getting the tip, sharpened on bricks and concrete and bone, between the bolt and the wall. Clenching his teeth to stop himself shaking, he eases it back and twists the knob with a hard flick of his wrist.

The door opens, and Liam tumbles out, yelling and swinging a two-by-four in wild, heavy arcs.

Louis barely dodges, manages to get a hand on the wood before the rest of Liam is slamming into him, until they're rolling over and over, Louis' shoulder impacting on something painful. They come to a halt with Liam straddling Louis' hips, hands like clamps pinning his wrists to the floor. "Liam," Louis manages, too desperate to even be happy, too shocked. There's a crazy, blank look in Liam's eyes. He has a shallow cut above his eyebrow and streaks of dust in his hair. "Liam, it's me, it's Louis!"

Liam's eyes dart around a second more, like he's looking for something to hit Louis with, his two-by-four lost in their wrestling, and then his eyes settle on Louis' face again and he blinks, blinks again, his eyes huge and disbelieving. "Lou," he breathes at last.

Louis nods, relief cresting over him like a wave, and then Liam is pulling him bodily upwards, burying his face in his neck, his breathing coming in panicked gasps. "I—fuck, fuck, I thought I was gonna die, I thought I'd never see you again—"

Louis just clings to him, disbelieving, so overwhelmed that nothing even feels like emotion yet, just an overwhelming rush of sensation. Liam stinks of sweat and blood and he's so, so warm, radiating warmth from every pore. _No wonder the zombies were driven mad by it_ , Louis thinks madly. He never wants to be further away from Liam than this, pressed impossibly tight, their curves and bones shifting to accommodate each other. Liam's moving, though, and with a shock Louis feels his lips at his throat, pressing little kisses to it, feels him nudge up under his chin, little feathery desperate things like he's trying to taste his heartbeat, and Louis shivers, tilts his head back to allow him room.

Liam peppers kisses up his chin and over his cheek, and from very far away Louis hears Zayn call, "Lou!" just as Liam captures his lips with his own.

This is not their first kiss, not really. He's kissed all of his boys, hello or goodbye, just appreciatively, and maybe he's been appreciating Liam more and more lately, and really no one should blame him, have you seen that mouth, but—this, this is different, this is not fond, long-suffering Liam, who fights Louis off with a laugh when he makes kiss faces at him, this is _Liam kissing him_. It's filthy and intentional and it feels like it's been a thousand years coming. Louis should probably be ashamed of the way he melts against Liam's chest, but when Liam puts his whole heart into something he could set the world aflame and Louis, after all, is just one small boy.

Liam pulls back long enough to take a breath and then kisses him again, quicker, breathing and then kissing and breathing and kissing like he needs both equally, and Louis gets it, meets him there, can feel, shoved together as they are, the simultaneous beat of their hearts. After what feels like both an age and only about ten seconds Liam pulls away further, slick-lipped and dazed.

"Yeah, well," says Harry, sounding peeved, "I still kissed him first."

Liam turns an attractive shade of red and Louis untangles their legs, a little stiff, and stands. He turns to raise an eyebrow at Harry, who's grinning despite himself. "You kissed everyone first, Haz, it doesn't count." He takes a beat, though, to look him over, him and Zayn behind him. They're disgusting but okay, and something in the back of his mind relaxes.

Zayn pulls Liam up and into his arms, laughing but looking as relieved as Louis feels, and Harry leaps at them to cling, too. "We missed you," he says to Liam, over and over. "Missed you, missed you, missed you."

Louis scratches his head and picks up his knife and tries not to think too hard about anything. 

When Zayn and Harry finally pull away from Liam, he frowns. "Niall—"

"He's okay," says Louis quickly. "He's—probably okay. Soldiers came, Li. It's over."

Liam blinks. "Over, like—for real? They cured it?"

Harry nods. "I was talking to the captain, they said some Romanian scientist synthesized a cure. Just like that."

"Shit," says Zayn, blinking, his arm still around Liam's back. "What—what do we do now?"

Liam catches Louis' eye, his face still tinged with pink. "We let someone else take care of us," he says softly, holding Louis' gaze.

They give themselves up to the first patrol they come across, stepping out into the street slowly and carefully, hands raised above their heads. Louis thinks it says something about the last year that the least scared he's been is when he's facing the barrels of six assault rifles, all trained on him and three of the people he loves most in the world.

"That was about the stupidest thing I've ever seen anyone do," the captain snaps at them when they're hustled back to their base (which is now the solders' base as well, Louis notes, which makes him proud of his tactical sense). His eyes flicker over them to Liam, who's standing military-straight, the only one of them not in a stolen uniform. "But good work."

"Thank you, sir," says Harry seriously, and then he loses control of his face and pulls Liam to his side again, wrapping his limbs around him like an octopus, and Liam's eyes scrunch up all crinkled, and Louis feels warm down to his toes.

Zayn knocks a shoulder into his. "Hey," he says.

Louis bites his lip, looks sideways at him. "Hey."

Zayn studies his face for a minute and then curls a hand around the back of his neck, just leaving it there, and Louis, inexplicably, unbearably, tastes tears at the back of his throat. "Let's go get Niall," he says in lieu of anything else. "Let's—I need to see Niall."

+

Niall's in a real, actual bed in a real, actual hospital that they get to by helicopter, and the whole thing is so surreal that Louis barely knows what to do with all his limbs. He feels like some kind of, like, wolf-child or something, confused by all technology for about ten seconds before it all comes back to him. Liam and Harry are worse, staring out the windows of the helicopter like they've never been off the ground before, like they didn't spend a third of their lives before the disaster on planes.

Niall's cheek are pink and his hair is clean and when he sees them he lights up like it's fucking christmas—and it was, wasn't it, christmas has been and gone—and scrambles to push himself further upright. Liam crosses to him first, pushes him back against the pillows. "Don't you dare," he says. He presses a hand to Niall's heart, and Niall covers it with his own hand.

"Right," says Niall, eyes huge, lips twitching in the kind of disbelief that Louis feels down to his bones. "You're—god, you're alive, we're all _alive._ "

Zayn slides to his other side, runs shaking fingers down his cheek. "We made it, Ni," he says softly.

Niall presses a kiss to each of his fingers in turn, almost smiling too hard to kiss his thumb, and then flicks his eyes past him to Harry. "Got your notebook," he says, and Harry stares at his toes.

Niall laughs at him and it's probably the best sound Louis has ever heard in his life, a healthy kind of laugh, unrestrained. "C'mon, boys!" he shouts. "Stop standing around like a bunch of corpses, we fuckin' made it!" He slams a fist down on the arm of his hospital bed. "If this weren't a hospital, we'd be getting fuckin' smashed!"

+

It hadn't been so bad, everywhere else. It'd started in Philadelphia and spread North first, taken a while to fully spread overseas, so they'd been right in the thick of the infection. It wasn't—good, anywhere, or it wouldn't have taken them a year to get the cure, but in New York they'd basically been at ground zero.

They'd had no way of knowing, no way of hearing from their families or friends, for so long. They had no way of understanding what was happening even to them, and that—staying alive, keeping one another alive—had been Louis' priority for so long that when he steps off the plane and into his mother's arms he feels like, like maybe it hadn't happened at all. Maybe he'd fallen asleep, hungover as shit, on the plane ride back from their Christmas in New York, and it'd all been a horrible, unbelievably fucked up nightmare. But he still hasn't managed to shave properly, and his hand's a little fucked from where he broke two of his fingers last July, and he can't quite manage to sit still, even when his mom's driving him home, even when they manage to scrape together real, hot food, and he's surrounded by his sisters, Lottie with half her head shaved where she had to get shrapnel removed and Daisy with her arm in a sling.

He shoves his hand into Lottie's remaining hair and reassures her that she looks very hip, and when Liam calls after dinner he answers the phone without letting it finish the first ring.

"Doesn't feel right, does it," Liam says without preamble.

Louis sits on his bed, pulls his feet up to his chest, his feet loose in his socks. Everything hangs loose, even the clothes he used to wear in high school. "No," he says. "It doesn't."

"It's fucked, right," Liam continues earnestly, "because I missed my mum and my sisters so much, sometimes they were all I could think about. I once—you remember when I woke up with my mouth filled with blood?"

Louis nods, knows somehow Liam will know.

"I panicked," Liam says, "because I couldn't get them out of my head, their corpses. Bit right through my own tongue. Stupid." He huffs a laugh, just a little thing, barely anything but a breath. "You nearly knocked my head off, you were so angry. And you were right, I endangered everyone for no reason."

"Liam," Louis says softly, staring at his knees, his heart gone a little liquid. "I was angry because I was _worried_ about you." He picks at the seams of his pajama pants. "I—I thought. I thought I'd lost you. At the end."

It's the closest they've come to talking about the kiss, and Louis closes his eyes, halfway wishing he hadn't said it at all, had let it sit until they were really together again, but then Liam takes a breath and says, "I love you."

There's a pause in which neither of them breathe, and then Liam laughs. "You—you already know that, of course you do, but I think you also. Know I mean it differently now, have meant it differently for, for a while."

Louis' half-wish becomes a whole one, and he says quickly, "I don't think I can do this over the phone."

There's another pause, and then Liam says in a totally different, kind of distant voice, "Oh."

Louis' eyes fly open. "Fuck, Li, that's not what I meant, I—me too, okay? Me too, I promise, I just—" he takes a breath. "I need to see you, I need to, to be able to kiss you, this—nothing feels real, phones don't—and I need this to be real. Okay? I need it to be real."

"Yeah," says Liam. "Me, too."

+

They only stay apart for a week before they're all going crazy with it. Louis has nightmares every goddamn night, can't stand waking up alone, can't stand not being able to check in with the others, just see their sleeping faces or hold their hands or curl against their chests to feel their heartbeats. He's texting them all constantly, every time he wakes up, just little things, _hey, how are you,_ anything, but it isn't the same, it feels like a trick, like anyone could be answering, and he knows how fucking paranoid that sounds but he also kind of feels like he's allowed, considering.

His mum bursts into tears when he tells her he's leaving again, but texts for her are different, and he promises to call her every night, Skype her every morning, until she, too, can believe that he's real.

In the airport he picks up a newspaper—they've just started running again—and is somehow surprised to see his face on the front page. _Boyband Survives the Heart of the Outbreak_ , the headline reads, and then there's a picture of him and Zayn and Liam with the soldiers. They're so bloodstained and thin, the exhaustion clear even with the graininess of the picture. It was clearly taken on a cell phone. He wonders if one of the soldiers was a fan, and giggles a little into his tea.

Zayn slides up next to him in the line when he's boarding, and Louis takes a minute to marvel at how much better he feels as soon as Zayn touches him, as soon as they're linked together, palm to palm. "Missed you," he says out of the corner of his mouth. He talks the woman next to him into switching seats so he doesn't have to stop touching Zayn, gives her his autograph for good measure, signs it, _Louis Tomlinson, stay alive_ and a little heart.

Zayn brought a gossip mag, with before-and-after photos of them, candid of them leaving venues a year and a half ago and magnified close-ups of the same picture that's in the newspaper. Louis stares at his own face, how full his cheeks are, how bright his eyes, and then glances at his reflection in the window of the plane. Doesn't seem like he could ever have looked like that, really. Maybe he's an imposter, gone mad, only claiming to be famous boybander Louis Tomlinson.

They draw Niall into the newspaper picture, make sure to give him sweet Frankenstein scars and like six guns.

They meet up with the others at Harry's stepdad's bungalow. Harry and Niall are already there when they arrive, suspiciously mussed and languid. Zayn kicks Harry in the shin. "No fair," he says, and Harry just smirks up at him, cheeky.

Liam arrives last, and everyone immediately swarms him, hugging him tight. "Lads," he says, laughing, "it's only been a week." But he hugs back, hard, and doesn't let go of Louis' hand.

Niall throws down his crutches, flops backwards to lay in Harry's lap. "Hey," he says, "we missed Christmas."

Harry frowns. "Well, that's not right," he says, "let's have it now!"

Liam grins at all of them from where he's curled into Louis' side, his nose scrunched up in his face. "It's, like, mid-January," he laughs.

Harry links their fingers together, running his thumb over Liam's knuckles. "Lots of lost time to make up, though," he points out.

Louis squirms his toes under Niall's butt. "I think someone got their present from Harold already," he says, arching his eyebrows at him, and Zayn chokes on air, giving him a mock-scandalized look. Niall stutters, turning bright red, and Harry groans, _"Louis."_

"I meant the notebook," Louis says, grinning, and Liam curls into him in his laughter, eyes scrunched away to nothing. His hand is huge and warm on Louis' neck.

The do have Christmas, sort of, they bring in a tree anyway and decorate it with whatever they can find, which includes construction paper and golf clubs and Harry's dirty underwear. No one wants to split up to go shopping, or even leave their comfortable couch, so they end up just exchanging the things they brought with them, the stuff Louis thinks of as almost extensions of themselves, the stuff that survived with them. _Boyband and Collection of Weird Objects Survives Heart of Outbreak_ , he thinks to himself.

Zayn divvies up his paint, giving each of them a color. Harry gets red—"the color of my heart," Zayn says dramatically before passing it over. Liam, calm, steady, rock-solid Liam, gets blue. Niall takes his yellow canister with a little smile, and Zayn leans in to kiss his cheek, mutters, "my sunshine," in his ear. Finally he turns to Louis, who grins at him, and holds out a hand.

"Last," says Zayn, "but never least, Louis."

Louis sniffs. "Most, I would hope," he says, but it comes out gentler than he meant it to.

Zayn hands him a white can, and for a minute Louis is going to be offended—what is he, colorless?—but he reads it and notices it's not paint at all, but fixative, the stuff that keeps paint from fading and getting on everything it touches. He raises his eyebrows at Zayn. 

"You protect us," Zayn says awkwardly. "You're—you keep us bright." He bites his lip. "It's dumb, I'm sorry, it's just—without you, we're." He subsides into silence. "Nevermind, it's stupid, I'm stupid."

"Hey," says Louis, feeling like his chest is made of paper, like he might rip open at any second. He scrambles out from under Liam's arm to wrap himself around Zayn. "Shut up, that's my very best friend you're calling stupid."

"S'not dumb, Zaynie," Niall says quietly, and Zayn breathes into Louis shoulder, his hands fisted against his shoulder blades. "It's true."

"Yeah," Harry chimes in.

"Kinda gave the rest of us a hard act to follow, though," Liam mutters, and then they're all laughing, and if Louis' shirt's a little wetter than it was a few minutes ago, no one needs to know.

He separates from Zayn, kissing him on the forehead. "I'll go next, then," he says, "though I really—I don't have much."

He opens his pack, pulling out his bat, a few scraps of paper, and a little bag. "I collected some stuff," he says, "like. Along the way." Early on, he'd thought they might do birthdays, might need birthdays, but that plan kind of got lost.

He pulls out something small and crosses to Harry, going down on one knee. Harry laughs, holding out a hand, laying the other across his forehead like a swooning lady, and Louis slips the ring onto his finger. It's hideous, by his standards, but it's exactly the kind of thing Harry used to wear, before they decided that rings caught on things too much, glinted in the darkness when they shouldn't. Harry beams down at him, his curls clean and cloudy around his face, and for a minute Louis is made breathless by him, remembers what it was like to meet Harry for the first time, to be drawn inexorably into his orbit and only released when they'd learned every inch of each others' souls.

He moves on to Niall, pressing the little metal pick into his hand, and Niall opens his fist curiously to examine it. It's simple metal, engraved with the words _One Year_ , presumably an anniversary present for someone far away, someone presumably dead, but Niall turns it over and over in his hands and when he meets Louis' eyes he nods. "Thank you," he says.

Louis smiles at him. "Later," he says, "will you play for us?"

Niall takes a breath and nods again. "Of course."

The bundle of papers he presents to Liam, watches his face as he turns them over in his hands. "This is…" he says, trailing off.

Louis nods. "It's the song we wrote," he says quietly. "A week in, when we thought it'd be solved any minute."

"And now here it is a week out," Liam says, staring up at him. "I can't believe you kept it."

Louis shrugs a little. "I kept the things that matter," he says. He picks up his bat, presents it to Zayn balanced in both hands like a sword. It's pock-marked and bloody, the wood stained dark in countless places, and splintered in others, the grip wrapped in peeling duct tape. He'd thought about cleaning it, but it hadn't seemed right.

Zayn hesitates before taking it, looking up at him questioningly.

Louis smiles at him. "You told me I protected you," he says, "but you protect me, too. You've got my back, always." His eyes slip sideways to Liam. "Besides," he says, "someone wise told me I should let someone else take care of us for a while."

Zayn wraps his hand around the grip, weighs it in his hands. "Thank you," he says quietly.

Louis holds out a fist for him to bump, and Zayn bumps it, still holding the bat.

"Well!" Harry announces. "My turn." He stands up, fiddling with his necklaces, and Louis takes his place between Liam and Zayn again, Niall leaning back against his legs. 

He moves to each one of them, hanging a necklace around their necks like he's a Hawai'ian girl with leis. He winks at Zayn, brushes a kiss over Louis' cheekbone, and kisses Liam full on the mouth. He leans down over Niall, his curls falling fetchingly over his face, and then just gives him a serious, manly nod. Niall nods back, managing to hold it until Harry straightens back up, and then cracks up, shoving his face into Louis' knee while he laughs. 

Louis lifts the necklace to look at it, recognizes the little silver paper airplane, and smiles. "Hooray," he says mockingly, against the swell of affection in his chest, "now I can match Taylor Swift."

There's a moment where he hears every single one of them almost say, _if she's not dead_ , and that's—sobering, that's awful, that drives home just how many people, not close friends necessarily but people, people who they interacted with, moved in the same circles with, people whose lives they touched and whose lives touched them, even things as simple as twitter followers, fans…

The room gets a little closer, the fire casting weird shadows on the walls. They all shift slightly closer together.

Niall clears his throat. "As you lads know, I didn't really hang on to much," he says, ever practical, "but I might have prepared for this situation. Hazza, if you'll help me?"

Harry salutes, and the two of them vanish into the kitchen, coming back with a case of beer and Niall's guitar, not the one he brought to Zayn's a year ago, but his back-up tour guitar, and he clears his throat a little as Harry passes out beer. It's cold, and Louis just kind of passes it back and forth between his hands, marveling.

"It's kind of like being high," he says after a minute, and Zayn laughs softly at his side, but nods. "Everything's suddenly amazing, and I'm so…" he trails off.

"Grateful," Niall chimes in, and strums a chord. "Anyone got any requests?"

"Alive," suggests Liam wryly, and Niall laughs, turning stare soulfully into his face, and begins to play.

Later, they're all sprawled out in piles. They tried to go to bed separately, but it just feels wrong, feels dangerous without a boy at your back and a weapon in hand, so they're sleeping like they have for a year, Louis and Liam keeping watch more out of habit than anything else. _They're safe,_ Louis tells himself again and again, every time he finds himself staring too hard at the shifting of a shadow on the wall. _They're safe, you can relax._

It helps to have Liam as a solid warm wall at his back, curled halfway around him. He's got one hand slung over Louis' shoulder and Louis is toying with his fingers absently. It's the most natural thing in the world, really, to lean over and take one of them in his mouth, to scrape his teeth along the pad of it, to suck lightly.

Liam tenses against him, breathes almost reverentially, " _Lou_."

Louis smiles against his palm and continues, kissing each of his knuckles in turn. He lingers at his wrist, nipping at his pulse point, flicking his tongue over the skin there.

Liam shifts so Louis can turn around in his lap and he does, straddling him, keeping a hold on his hand so he can kiss his way higher, up to the tender skin on the inside of his elbow, and Liam laughs, a little breathless. "Tickles," he says when Louis arches a brow at him.

Louis relents, leaning up to capture his lips instead, and Liam sighs a little into his mouth. They kiss slow, nothing and everything like the kiss in the tunnels, the same intensity with none of the hurry, and it sort of jumbles up all the things Louis wants to say in his head so he just ends up mumbling, "Wanted this for so long," against his mouth.

Liam blinks his eyes open, pulls away a little. "Really?" he asks, his cheeks pink. "Why—why did you never…?"

Louis cocks his head at him, his face serious. "Because you never refuse me anything," he says.

Liam's brows draw together. "What?"

Louis runs his hands over Liam's chest, absently appreciative. "You're so good, Li," he says. "You go along with me no matter what I want you to do, even the stupid stuff, even the reckless stuff, even the selfish stuff that I have no right to ask, and." He takes a breath, looks up again to meet Liam's eyes. "I needed this to be different. I needed this to be—from you. I needed you to want me because you want me, because you love me, not because I want you to."

Liam's still frowning at him, but he's laughing a little bit, too, like he's never been so baffled in his life. "Lou," he says, "Louis, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

Louis shrugs, embarrassed. "It's just true," he says, and it comes out petulant.

"You're so dumb," Liam says fondly. "Like there's anything in the world I want as much as I want you."

"W-well," Louis says, trying to figure out this whole breathing thing, "there we go then, it's on you for never saying so. I gave you enough hints!"

Liam narrows his eyes. "You did no such thing, you were just being you."

Louis leans in so he can bump Liam's nose with his, nudge along his cheek. "Maybe," he says. "Maybe that's part of me being me, wanting you to notice me wanting you."

"Shut up and kiss me, Tommo," Liam says against his lips, Louis does, but he also shimmies his hips, grinding down just a little. It doesn’t do to reward such demands without taking a little back. "Occurs to me," he says without stopping the motion of his hips, "you never gave me a christmas present."

Liam moans a little against his lips and then Niall says clearly, "If you guys are gonna have sex, at least do it quietly."

Liam bursts into a gale of giggles and Louis is right there with him, collapsing against his chest. He tries to catch his breath, afraid for a minute that the mood's ruined, but then Liam's legs bunch under them and he picks Louis bodily up, his palms under Louis' ass, and that's, um. Louis wraps his legs around him and buries his face in Liam's neck as Liam carries him towards the bedroom. "Okay," he says happily, mouthing at Liam's ear.

"Also," Niall calls after them, "congratulations on no longer being utter morons!" 

Louis hears Harry stir, a mumbled, "what," and then Niall says, "nothin', Haz, just Lou and Liam finally shagging each others' brains out." 

Harry says sleepily, "oh, good," and then the door of the bedroom closes between them.

Liam drops Louis unceremoniously on the bed, and Louis laughs breathlessly, watching Liam lean over him, pulling his shirt off over his head with a little grunt. There's moonlight filtering through the window and Liam's _clean_ , all pale muscle, though he's got bruises in various stages of healing scattered all across his chest. Louis traces featherlight fingers over them, watches Liam's skin rise in goosebumps in the chill air.

"C'mere already," he says, too happy to try to look sexy, though he gives a little wriggle against the sheets anyway. 

Liam beams at him and crawls into the bed, pushes at the hem of Louis' shirt until he can kiss his stomach, and Louis laughs again and then gasps as Liam's lips trace lower. He's too skinny, he knows it, they all are, but Liam licks at the hollow of his hipbone and Louis stops caring.

"God," he says again, flinging an arm across his eyes, " _god,_ " and it really is like being high, all of this sensation at once, soft sheets and cold air and Liam's hot hot breath, ghosting over his skin. Liam tugs at his jeans, unbuttoning them and working them down his hips.

Louis catches his chin before he ducks his head again, pulls him upwards. "Slow down," he murmurs, "we have all the time in the world."

Liam stares at him, whole universes of emotion in his eyes, and Louis kisses him in lieu of saying, _yeah, me too._

Liam does slow down, and if Louis had been overwhelmed with sensation before, now it’s worse. They spend what feels like hours just kissing, long and heated, Liam working Louis’ lower lip between his teeth. By the time he relents Louis is dizzy with him, the smell and taste of him, the familiar-new slide of his hands on his skin. Liam is licking and sucking his way down his throat, his hands tracing up and down Louis’ arms, fingers flickering over his wrists, and Louis pushes back against him just to see if Liam will hold him down.

He does, maybe instinctually, because he backs off a minute later and meets Louis’ eyes questioningly. Louis licks his lips in a way that he hopes conveys how very much okay it’d been, and then says simply, “Trust you.”

Liam stutters a little in his movements, turning a little pink, and then says, “Good,” and tightens his hands on Louis’ wrists again. Even with the height difference he eventually works his way too low to keep holding them, though, so Louis twists one wrist around so their fingers are laced together and slips the other down to slide into Liam’s hair.

Liam squeezes his hand and tugs Louis’ jeans down to his knees, but leaves them there, probably intentionally. He’s an idiot, but he catches on quick. Louis twists against the tension of the fabric, and for a second it’s just as delicious as it used to be, being restrained, and then there’s panic rising in his throat and fuck, fuck, what if he needs to run, what if there’s a pocket of them in England’s backwoods, what if he needs to _fight_ —

Liam stills him with a huge, warm hand on his hip, his eyes concerned. Louis meets his gaze and takes a long breath. “Sorry,” he says softly, as Liam tugs his jeans off the rest of the way. “Sorry, I—maybe we’ll work up to it.”

Liam nods like it’s not an issue, like Louis didn’t just have a full-on fit in the middle of what was shaping up to be a really awesome blowjob. He drops Louis’ pants on the floor and slides into bed next to him, his fingers tracing patterns down Louis’ chest and stomach, soothing and teasing both.

Louis makes a protesting noise but curls into his chest anyway, and Liam shushes him. “It’s like you said, Lou,” he says, and brushes his knuckles over Louis’ cock, which is hardening again at the teasing pressure of his fingers. Louis gasps and shudders into him. “We have all the time in the world,” Liam says, and wraps his fist loose around Louis.

Louis pulls him close, shoves his face into the crook of his neck, and breathes. “Besides,” Liam says conversationally, as if he’s not wanking Louis off with clever twists of his fingers, “didn’t like being that far away from you anyway.”

Louis wants to laugh at him, wants to ask how having his dick in his mouth was being far away, but he’s too busy clinging to him, too busy letting out little embarrassing broken sounds against his skin. 

“Don’t like having my back exposed—“ Liam continues, and Louis kisses him hard, to shut him up and also to stop embarrassing himself, because this—being all wrapped up in Liam, surrounded by his warmth and the delicious friction of his big, skillful hands—this is the safest he’s felt in over a year, and he can feel himself unravel and knows he doesn’t have to resist.

Liam presses a kiss to his forehead, after, when Louis is a boneless mess, rutting against him in little shaky waves. “Fuck,” he says, wet lips on Liam’s cheekbone, and feels Liam close his eye, feels the brush of his eyelashes. He kisses him again by feel, and then again. “Was so scared,” he says, expressing some babbled thought half-formed, “was so scared I’d never get to have this.”

Liam’s arms tighten around him, and Louis goes to sleep.

+

The venue is not, by far, the grandest they’ve ever played.

What it is is a stage in the middle of an impossibly huge field, a kind of greek theatre set up where the hills rise around them for better acoustics, and there’s neither lights nor sound to speak of. What it is is a free concert, a concert for the human, for the living, and for the beloved dead.

What it is is the most important thing they’ve ever done.

Zayn wraps his arms around him from behind, and Louis holds onto his hands, rocking back and forth. "Zap," he murmurs softly, closing his eyes, "this is real, this is happening."

He can feel Zayn smile against the side of his head. "It's happening," he says. "I told you we'd get back here."

Louis opens his eyes, watches Harry swoop in like a hawk to kiss Niall on the cheek, watches Liam smooth his hands down his vest nervously. Maybe he can feel Louis' gaze, because he turns and smiles like sunrise.

"Yeah," says Louis, "you did."

They step out on stage, the five of them, and there's a terrible moment when Louis looks down at the crowd, fully visible in the late afternoon sun, and sees them, sees rot. But they're moving wrong, and he blinks it away and then it's just—people, swaying in anticipation the same way he is, people who haven't had a reason to smile in far too long a time.

He steps forward to the makeshift mic, just a battery-powered bullhorn on a stick. "Everyone!" he calls. "We are One Direction!" 

Before the outbreak, it'd always seemed a stupid thing that bands did, introducing themselves at their own concerts. Louis had always privately thought, duh, they know, that's why they're here. But now it's affirmation, not even really for the crowd, but for himself and the boys flanking him. 

"We are One Direction," he says again, "and this is Survive!"

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, everyone. Popping out of retirement for the holidays. I love you all very, very much, and I hope you appreciate this offering to the absolute best fandom I've ever been a part of. Seriously, give yourself a round of applause. I miss y'all.
> 
> This is dedicated to shinywhimsy, because she wanted ot5 zombie au and as usual my brain got out of hand. <3


End file.
